Married Part 41

she added, emphatically. "There are other qualities, besides beauty, which count."

"What quality do you appreciate most in a man?"

"Kindness," she exclaimed, without the slightest hesitation. "For this is a quality very rarely found in a man."

"Kindness and weakness usually go hand in hand; women admire strength."

"What sort of women are you talking about? Rude strength has had its day; our civilisation has reached a sufficiently high standard to make us value muscles and rude strength no more highly than a kind heart."

"It ought to have! And yet--watch the dancing couples!"

"To my mind true manliness is shown in loftiness of sentiment and intelligence of the heart."

"Consequently a man whom the whole world calls weak and cowardly...."

"What do I care for the world and its opinion!"

"Do you know that you are a very remarkable woman?" said the young lawyer, feeling more and more interested.

"Not in the least remarkable! But you men are accustomed to regard women as dolls...."

"What sort of men do you mean? I, dear lady, have from my childhood looked up to woman as a higher manifestation of the species man, and from the day on which I fell in love with a woman, and she returned my love, I should be her slave."

Adeline looked at him long and searchingly.

"You are a remarkable man," she said, after a pause.

After each of the two had declared the other to be a remarkable specimen of the species man, and made a good many remarks on the futility of dancing, they began to talk of the melancholy influence of the moon. Then they returned to the ball-room and took their place in a set of quadrilles.

Adeline was a perfect dancer and the lawyer won her heart completely because he "danced like an innocent girl."

When the set was over, they went out again on the verandah and sat down.

"What is love?" asked Adeline, looking at the moon as if she expected an answer from heaven.

"The sympathy of the souls," he replied, and his voice sounded like the whispering breeze.

"But sympathy may turn to antipathy; it has happened frequently,"

objected Adeline.

"Then it wasn't genuine! There are materialists who say that there would be no such thing as love if there weren't two s.e.xes, and they dare to maintain that sensual love is more lasting than the love of the soul. Don't you think it low and b.e.s.t.i.a.l to see nothing but s.e.x in the beloved woman?"

"Don't speak of the materialists!"

"Yes, I must, so that you may realise the loftiness of my feelings for a woman, if ever I fell in love. She need not be beautiful; beauty soon fades. I should look upon her as a dear friend, a chum. I should never feel shy in her company, as with any ordinary girl. I should approach her without fear, as I am approaching you, and I should say: 'Will you be my friend for life?' I should be able to speak to her without the slightest tremor of that nervousness which a lover is supposed to feel when he proposes to the object of his tenderness, because his thoughts are not pure."

Adeline looked at the young man, who had taken her hand in his, with enraptured eyes.

"You are an idealist," she said, "and I agree with you from the very bottom of my heart. You are asking for my friends.h.i.+p, if I understand you rightly. It shall be yours, but I must put you to the test first.

Will you prove to me that you can pocket your pride for the sake of a friend?"

"Speak and I shall obey!"

Adeline took off a golden chain with a locket which she had been wearing round her neck.

"Wear this as a symbol of our friends.h.i.+p."

"I will wear it," he said, in an uncertain voice; "but it might make the people think that we are engaged."

"And do you object?"

"No, not if you don't! Will you be my wife?"

"Yes, Axel! I will! For the world looks askance at friends.h.i.+p between man and woman; the world is so base that it refuses to believe in the possibility of such a thing."

And he wore the chain.

The world, which is very materialistic at heart, repeated the verdict of her friends:

"She marries him in order to be married; he marries her because he wants a wife."

The world made nasty remarks, too. It said that he was marrying her for the sake of her money; for hadn't he himself declared that anything so degrading as love did not exist between them? There was no need for friends to live together like married couples.

The wedding took place. The world had received a hint that they would live together like brother and sister, and the world awaited with a malicious grin the result of the great reform which should put matrimony on another basis altogether.

The newly married couple went abroad.

When they returned, the young wife was pale and ill-tempered. She began at once to take riding-lessons. The world scented mischief and waited. The man looked as if he were guilty of a base act and was ashamed of himself. It all came out at last.

"They have _not_ been living like brother and sister," said the world.

"What? Without loving one another? But that is--well, what is it?"

"A forbidden relations.h.i.+p!" said the materialists.

"It is a spiritual marriage!"

"Or incest," suggested an anarchist.

Facts remained facts, but the sympathy was on the wane. Real life, stripped of All make-believe, confronted them and began to take revenge.

The lawyer practised his profession, but the wife's profession was practised by a maid and a nurse. Therefore she had no occupation. The want of occupation encouraged brooding, and she brooded a great deal over her position. She found it unsatisfactory. Was it right that an intellectual woman like her should spend her days in idleness? Once her husband had ventured to remark that no one compelled her to live in idleness. He never did it again.

"She had no profession."

"True; to be idle was no profession. Why didn't she nurse the baby?"

"Nurse the baby? She wanted a profession which brought in money."